For leaking hundreds of thousands of classified documents, Bradley Manning is set to spend the next three decades in prison.

A military judge on Wednesday sentenced Manning to 35 years in prison - less than the 60 years prosecutors sought, as well as the 90 years he could have received.

The former Army intelligence analyst - convicted in July of stealing 750,000 pages of classified documents and videos and disseminating them to WikiLeaks - will be credited for the roughly three and a half years he's already served in detention.

The judge, Army Col. Denise Lind, also reduced his rank from private first class to private, and ordered him to be dishonorably discharged. Manning also will forfeit pay and benefits.

The question now is how many more of the potential 136 years he'll serve.

The military will give Manning credit for each of his 1,162 days of pre-trial confinement, plus the judge, Col. Denise Lind, credited Manning with an additional 112 days for the harsh treatment he suffered while being held at a Marine Corps Base Quantico brig.

The defense has also filed motions to have four of the charges on which he was found guilty merged into two. Lind isn't expected to rule on that motion before Friday.

Lind acquitted Manning of the most grievous charge of aiding the enemy. Had she convicted him of that one charge, he could have spent life in prison without the possibility of parole.

After spending three years in custody, the man accused of the largest leak of classified information in U.S. history will learn Tuesday whether he has been found guilty of aiding the enemy.

A verdict from the judge in the court-martial of Pfc. Bradley Manning will be announced at 1 p.m. ET Tuesday, according to a spokeswoman for the military district of Washington.

If found guilty on the aiding the enemy charge, Manning could be sentenced to life in prison. He has pleaded guilty to nearly a dozen lesser charges that carry a sentence of up to 20 years behind bars.

Whether Manning is a whistle-blower or a traitor who betrayed his country has been hotly debated.

Authorities have accused Manning of delivering three-quarters of million pages of classified documents and videos to the secret-sharing site WikiLeaks - which has never confirmed the soldier was the source of its information. The material covered numerous aspects of U.S. military strategy in Iraq, gave what some called a ground view of events in the Afghanistan war and revealed the inner workings of U.S. State Department diplomacy in leaked cables.

FORT MEADE, Maryland (CNN) - After years of pretrial delays and legal battles, testimony in the court-martial trial of Pfc. Bradley Manning is all but over but the delays and battles continue.

Last Monday, before presenting witnesses in the case, Manning's defense attorneys filed motions asking the military judge, Col. Denise Lind, to find him not guilty of four of the charges against him.FULL POST

Lawyers for Pfc. Bradley Manning, charged with the largest leak of classified documents in U.S. history, asked the judge overseeing his court-martial trial on Monday to throw out the most severe charges.

Lawyers for the former Army intelligence analyst want to gut much of the government's case, allegations that Manning aided the enemy in handing over a trove of documents and other information to WikiLeaks.

Col. Denise Lind gave prosecutors most of the week to respond to the motion before turning to the defense, which began its case.

Manning's lawyers showed an Iraq war video that is at the heart of the charges. The video was shot from a U.S. Apache helicopter as it attacked a group of people in Baghdad in 2007. A Reuters TV news cameraman and his driver were among a dozen people killed.

Manning has said the video and the behavior of the Americans involved bothered him to the point where he uploaded the images to WikiLeaks.

A U.S. investigation of the attack found the gunship crew mistook the Reuters staffers cameras for weapons while seeking out insurgents who had been firing at American troops in the area.

WikiLeaks released the video in April 2010 under the name "Collateral Murder" and Manning was taken into custody for leaking it a month later.

Manning has already pleaded guilty to nearly a dozen lesser charges that carry a sentence of up to 20 years in prison.

But he has not admitted to the most serious count - aiding the enemies of the United States. If convicted of that, he could go to prison for life.

WikiLeaks has never confirmed that Manning was the source of its information.

Edward Snowden spoke out for the first time since fleeing to Moscow, according to a statement attributed to him that was released by the anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks.

In it, he attacked President Barack Obama and vowed to continue leaking information on government collection of data.

“This kind of deception from a world leader is not justice, and neither is the extralegal penalty of exile,” Snowden said, referring to Obama. “These are the old, bad tools of political aggression. Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me.”

The U.S. government, he claimed, is “using citizenship as a weapon,” revoking his passport and, he claimed, “leaving me a stateless person.”

The State Department says Snowden is not stateless, noting that he is still a U.S. citizen even though his passport has been revoked.

The anti-secrecy group WikiLeaks released a statement attributed to NSA leaker Edward Snowden on Monday, blasting the Obama administration for trying to block his efforts to seek asylum in another country.

"Their purpose is to frighten, not me, but those who would come after me," Snowden said in the statement issued through WikiLeaks, which has been assisting his effort to find a haven from U.S. espionage charges.

He added, "I am unbowed in my convictions and impressed at the efforts taken by so many."

Snowden had sought asylum in Ecuador after revealing details of secret U.S. surveillance programs to reporters. He flew to Moscow from Hong Kong on June 23 after the United States requested his extradition, and there were conflicting reports Monday about whether he was now seeking asylum in Russia.

Audio of Pfc. Bradley Manning telling a military court that he provided classified information to the WikiLeaks website has been posted on the Internet by the Freedom of the Press Foundation.

"This marks the first time the American public has heard the actual voice of Manning," the group said in a statement Monday.

Access to the military court proceedings for Manning is limited, and observers are not allowed to use recording devices. The foundation did not say how it obtained the audio but complained that the proceedings should be available to the public.

"By releasing this audio recording, we wish to make sure that the voice of this generation's most prolific whistle-blower can be heard - literally - by the world," said the group's statement.FULL POST

Pfc. Bradley Manning has begun testifying at his pre-trial hearing about his alleged abuse at Quantico. The Army private, accused of stealing thousands of classified documents and leaking them, spoke in a clear voice at the start of his testimony. He was wearing his Army service uniform, wire-rimmed glasses.

The defense has said it plans to have Manning plead guilty to lesser offenses and fight other charges as being too extreme.

At a pretrial hearing at Fort Meade the military judge, Col. Denise Lind, noted that only some of the offenses Manning is proposing to plead to are included in the current list of charges. If he were to plead guilty to these charges he would face a maximum of 16 years in prison, loss if pay, demotion to private and a dishonorable discharge.

But the judge decided other charges the defense proposed Manning plead to are irregular and would not be accepted unless a convening authority were to refer the charges to the court.

Manning has not officially told the court he will plead guilty to the charges.

The officer who oversaw security at the military base where Army private Bradley Manning was held for a time said on Wednesday he was not pressured by superiors to keep the accused WikiLeaker in a high-level lockup and under constant watch.

Marine Col. Robert Oltman said his decision to maintain maximum-security status for Manning during his eight-month confinement in Quantico in Virginia was borne out of caution.

Oltman said at a pre-trial hearing at Fort Meade, Maryland, for Manning that he recognized the case was high profile but told subordinates at the Marine base to "do what's right" and not "worry about somebody looking over your shoulder."

Manning's lawyers are trying to get the case thrown out - or at least any sentence reduced, if he's convicted - by claiming he was mistreated at the Quantico brig from July 2010 until he was moved to the military prison at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas, in April 2011.

Search Security Clearance

Share this blog

About this blog

CNN's Security Clearance examines national and global security, terrorism and intelligence, as well as the economic, military, political and diplomatic effects of it around the globe, with contributions from CNN's national security team in Washington and CNN journalists around the world.